Haunted by a Dark Spirit

04 June 2021 | Haunted houses, Your Stories, Your True Encounters

Let me be the first to say this is going to be a long post. I wrote it as a means to, I suppose cope with all that was happening at the time, and while it is the high-lights of the insanity that happened. I think that I was genuinely being hunted or… haunted by something evil. Even worse, I wasn’t alone in witnessing this thing’s work. Let me know what you think.

I was twenty-one years old when my grandmother who raised me, died of cancer. Her death was an extremely emotional, and mental toll that forced me away from college, and made me return home to the house she and my grandfather built. It wasn’t ever finished, a three-bedroom two-bath home surrounded by the red clay of the country, towering old cedar trees, and surrounded by country folk who were hard-working, God-fearing people. No one could have understood what would happen with her death though. The house no longer felt like a home when I entered the door, dragging my luggage from the dorms inside and to her large walk-in closet. The house belonged to me now, but in truth, I didn’t want it.

It was as though she’d never been there. Her clothes were present, as were her jewelry items and the white bedding she loved. But, her laughter no longer resounded with her voice, the warmth she exuded had gone as well, leaving the master bedroom cold and the air stagnant. It was as though the living color and safety that this home once held had been snuffed out with her passing. Standing there inside this large closet, I suddenly felt anxious, and I gravitated to her clothes that hung neatly in the closet, pulling out a favorite pink shirt and bringing it to my nose to smell it. I wanted to feel like a piece of her was still with me, I wanted to have her scent there one more time, but when I pulled the shirt to do this, there was no scent. It too had been erased it seemed. And that left me feeling all the more empty. For the first time since the night she died, I found myself crying, standing in this closet with no idea of what to do now that she was gone. My biological mother was living with me at the time, as was my college roommate, and my three siblings. Yet, I honestly had never felt more alone. So, I stood there, contemplating what to do next as I tried to cope with losing someone so precious to me, and grappling with the reality that the cancer that took her, is genetic and I or someone else could fall victim to it next.

To be honest, putting words to how I felt – and still feel – about all the things that happened during this time, is too painful. But, it was in her passing, that the worst things happened. I had gotten a better grasp on my emotions after a few minutes, and wiped my eyes, preparing to leave the closet and shut the door behind me. And then, out of the corner of my eyes, I saw a tall shadowy figure standing in the corner of the room. It had features I could make out, but just barely. A tall, thin frame with clawed hands looked like it and was black as night. It exuded this feeling of fear, of misery – the sensation of death.

I walked out of the room and shut the door, never once looking up from the ground before I went to my bedroom where my roommate and sister were. Only when they asked did I realize how pale I was, but I brushed it off with the way things had been – I was tired, heartbroken, and trying to ignore my own grieving process to be strong for my younger siblings. Something that I would regret in later years. But, I didn’t mention the shadowy figure, hoping it was nothing more than my exhausted brain coming up with whatever it could to make sense of everything that had happened over the last two years between college, my grandfather dying, and now my grandmother. I chalked it up to the stress, to the grief, and to the overwhelming sensations that I couldn’t name. That was the worst mistake I could have made.

In the coming months, things began to change. I noticed the shadow in the room whenever the door was open, so I rarely let it stay that way. Yet, sometimes, the kids would leave it open, and I would be face to face with the shadow. Eventually, my mom and youngest brother came to where they were sleeping in that room, my roommate and sister sharing a room with me, and my brother in the third and smallest bedroom. Yet no matter how much I tried to ignore it, something never felt right in the house. It was little things at first, like missing items, or small arguments that had happened occasionally. However, that steadily changed into what I can only describe as something malevolent.

More arguments started breaking out, escalating to the point where they bordered on abuse. My siblings were telling me how they didn’t feel comfortable in the house like someone was always watching them. My roommate didn’t like going into my grandmother’s room and my mom started getting sick. One night, my little brother was going to bed, and it was my job to make sure he went to sleep since my mom was working the night shift at her job. I put him down, and was going to turn on the closet light and shut the door behind us when he sat up in bed, and told me not to shut the door. He was around six or so at the time, so I didn’t think much of it. I was an adult and am still scared of the dark even today, so I imagined he was too. But then, he told me something that made my blood run cold.

“The shadow man will come close if you shut the door.”

And then, I knew he was seeing it too. I had said nothing, deciding not to give it attention just on the off chance that it wasn’t a hallucination. Although, the other two entities that my entire family had seen in the past – a blue dog and a short goblin-like creature with green skin and black veins bearing razor blades for teeth and sharp, thick yellow claws – did come to mind when I first saw it.

But, my little brother was scared, and I knew that telling him I could see it too would make matters worse. Therefore, I got into the bed with him and told him to not worry about it, that it was a bad dream. I did what any adult would do with a child saying they saw a monster – I pretended it wasn’t real if only to give him some comfort. Even while I was staring it down.

After that though, it only got worse. As the months went on, the entity started moving, drawing closer to the doorway of the bedroom, and each time it did that, there were more arguments and fights taking place. It gave me this indescribable feeling of dread. As though something bad was going to happen if we didn’t get rid of it. However, what ended up happening was fixable, if not terrible.

Our home was going into foreclosure, and at twenty-two years old, I was having to cope with losing the house, but at the same time, wanted nothing more to do with it. Selling the home would have been a benefit, but no one was going to buy it no matter what we did. Each potential buyer fell through, time and time again, the arguments were worsening, the monetary circumstances were atrocious, and then one night, my mom took my youngest brother to the grocery store with her, leaving us alone for a few hours while my roommate and I tended to the kids. Something had happened to where my sister and brother got into an argument, and the next thing I knew, a hear a baseball bat collide with a door frame.

It was a distinct sound, a heavy, deafening thud that made a chill go up my spine. I was in the kitchen, where I had a clear view of my grandmother’s room, where the shadow now stood by the foot of her bed. My sister started screaming and crying, and I panicked. I ran to get between them, and my brother swung the bat at my head. His eyes were wide, almost wild-looking, and his face was twisted in anger. I told my roommate to grab my sister, and I did the only thing I could think of – told her to take them into my grandmother’s closet and lock the door. I pushed my brother back, and we all ran into it, the baseball bat was swung a few more times, but thankfully missed all of us.

We locked the door behind us and sat there in the closet on the ground, huddled together unsure of what had happened. My sister was safe, my roommate was fine and so was I – but it terrified me to think of what was happening. I called my mom and she came back and talked my brother down, deciding after the ordeal of the night was over that it was time to get my brother into therapy. But it kept getting worse.

The house was always cold, we started packing up things to move somewhere because we ultimately lost the house, and my mom and I started getting into terrible arguments that were mostly screaming and shouting. She called me things that I knew she wouldn’t, I threw things, hit at walls, and started wanting to commit suicide. And the shadow kept getting closer to the door. Eventually, everything came to a head and I went across the street to my great grandmother’s with my roommate, my uncle helped us move what I wanted to keep out of the house, and we stayed at my great grandmother’s for almost a year.

During that time, my mom continued to live in the house for a while, often still saying and doing things that weren’t normal for her. I didn’t speak with my siblings or mother for nearly a year, but things started getting better while I lived with my great-grandmother. I got a job, as did my roommate, we started saving up money to move into an apartment, and my mom finally left the house. We still didn’t talk, and my siblings thought I betrayed them, but things were looking up. And then, I saw a creature in the hallway at my grandmother’s and so did my roommate. My great-grandmother started telling us that she was seeing things around the house, and I got the worst feeling that it was the shadow from across the street.

My roommate and I talked about it often, sleeping in the guest bedroom of my great grandmother’s house, sitting up in the middle of the night because we heard strange sounds from the hallway that connected into the living room. It made me feel like something bad was going to happen again, and it did. I lost the job I had because of a knee injury I sustained a few years prior. I had dislocated my right knee out of the socket and put it back in by myself, and despite doing it right, because of the way it had been, there were lasting damages. I had to take a break on a six-hour shift, and leaned against the stairwell – this was a two-story restaurant – to take pressure off my leg because it had seized up and I couldn’t bend my knee. They fired me.

It was frustrating, kind of scary even because it was beginning to feel like I was cursed. And then, a light shined through with me being able to sell some property I owned, which got my roommate and our first apartment. It was a place in the middle of a not-great area in our state, not far from where I’d grown up. The apartment complex was built like townhomes and was income-based. It was cheap, and not great. We slept on a blow-up mattress in our living room for the first four months, eventually getting a bed from my great grandmother that I still use today.

So, my roommate and I shared a room with one another and my pet chihuahua who sadly passed away in this apartment. Things were okay, not great, but okay. I thought that finally, I had put enough space between myself and that thing – but I hadn’t, and it was foolish for me to think that. My dog passing had nothing to do with this thing, he’d accidentally gotten into some chemicals and passed from those – blame pest control for spraying and not even telling me they had come by – and my roommate still had her job, but I no longer did, so I was often alone in this apartment.

I went downstairs, planning on fixing something to eat and going back upstairs to do some writing and do a bit of work that my therapist had suggested I do. Things were fine, though I was coping with the loss of my dog, whom I viewed as a child – I had bottle-fed him and everything – and it hurt. But, I was doing alright, and then I saw it again. It was standing in the corner of the living room, but this time, I could see better. I made eye contact with this entity. And it smiled.

The sight of it made me sick to my stomach. And I fled the kitchen and up the stairs, locking the door to my room behind me. I had a panic attack, and things just spiraled from there. My relationship with my mom was improving, but I was getting worse, having mood swings, panic attacks, anger spells, and outright becoming more and more aggressive atop having trouble with asthma and body pains. During my time at this apartment, I ended up being diagnosed with fibromyalgia and bipolar disorder.

Finally, I suspected that the entity was now just a thing that was because of my mental illness, and started medication for it. I was doing okay, I had gotten another dog – whom I still own, she’s three as of writing this story – and I was making progress on coming to terms with everything that had happened. Yet, there’s always more to the story, isn’t there?

My roommate began seeing the entity too, and it was edging closer to the stairwell, eventually coming to stand by the front door, and then the stairs. We would run upstairs at night after shutting the lights off, leaving the landing light at the top of the stairs on, and sleep with the tv going at night. It was scary and confusing. Why was it following me? What did it want? I began to question these things and each night, it drew closer and closer to the bedroom. And then, one day – it finally came inside the room.

I had never had sleep paralysis before, but I had always imagined it was scary. And I was right, it is. The first one I had, was on a bright summer day. My roommate was playing a video game, and I was sleeping in because I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before – things were fine until I had a sleep paralysis episode. I woke up from my nap, and my whole body was frozen. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t blink, and breathing was difficult. I knew I was awake because I could hear my roommate playing the game, my dog was sleeping on the bed next to me, and things were normal. Except for the entity that now had a face.

For the first time in a year since I had begun seeing this thing, I saw what it truly looked like. Tall, emaciated, blackened flesh like it had been burned, long sharp nails of equal color, fanged teeth, and white eyes that bore no pupil or iris. Atop its head were antler-like horns, and it crouched to fit into the corner of the room. I stared at it, in fear, in panic and doubt, and thinking that it was going to kill me. It smiled, exposing an evil grin that split up to its ears in a garish Glasgow grin. I wanted to believe I was having a nightmare, that this creature was just a figment of my imagination, and then it walked over to me and grabbed me by the throat. I felt corpse-like cold fingers touch my skin, and putrid breath that stunk of decay on my face, and it spoke to me.

“You will never escape me.”

And I sat up screaming. I went into a panic attack, my mental state went downhill, and I considered committing suicide again. It hurt me consistently, and the entity didn’t leave. I would wake up with bruises, strange scrapes that shouldn’t have been there, and even a bite once. It was hard to even come to terms with these things happening. I felt like I was being hunted.

My roommate saw it on several occasions, and so did other people. Stating that the apartment was freezing constantly, that it reeked of something rotting, and mold began to grow on the walls, in the hinges of the doors and vents. It was everywhere, and my roommate and I just left. We moved out nine months after living there and she got a better job. Our second apartment was great. It was in the city, thirty minutes away from the thing that had haunted us. We were doing good, had a nice home, good finances finally, and things were looking up.

Eventually, though, my mom had to come to stay with us due to her having to move apartments. Her old one had bugs and other unsavory things, but worst of all was the story that my sister told me about a woman in a bloodied dress with matted hair that stood in her stairwell at night – and whispered about how she liked to kill families. It terrified me. I was beginning to think there was no end in sight with these things. I told her not to worry about it, that God would protect us, and that she just needed to pray and it would help – because it had for me. I started praying a lot, and while I’m not what I would deem an ideal Christian, I do pray for safety and try to do what’s right.

But these things, wouldn’t go away. A year after we moved into the second apartment, we were moving out. Rats, black widow spiders, mold, peeling floors, and rotting walls, you name it – it happened. We both started getting sick, and we both saw the thing again, standing by the fireplace. My heart sank when that happened. Eventually, my mom and siblings moved into a current townhome that they are renting, and my roommate and I moved into an apartment even further away from my hometown, but still in the same state. We now live almost an hour away from where I grew up and while that particular entity hasn’t shown up save for one time – other things have happened.

My sleep paralysis went through the roof, nightmares about drowning or burning alive – things I fear the most – the entity stalking me, and a corpse sitting at the foot of my bed talking about things that were too rushed and whispered for me to make out. Though, something told me I didn’t want to know what it said. And then, there’s the good ghost. A nurse walks around at night, peering into our rooms to check on us. She’s warm, and kind, and feels like something safe and compassionate. A stark contrast to whatever has been hunting us.

We now have two dogs and a cat, our apartment is small, and we’re seeking a house within the next year. But, during the pandemic, in 2020 my sister told me about a ghost who’s in a trash bag and sits up in the kitchen at their place. She came over, and it was there in the middle of the night. A visible shadow appeared on our walls two weeks later, and my roommate and I swore things were trying to come out of it. But, the nurse spirit? She spoke and said it wasn’t allowed here. We both heard it, we still hear her walking around at night, along with a white cat spirit that plays with my cat sometimes.

The trash bag ghost was seen by my mom and other siblings but seems to have left them alone now. I still think about all of this, and it scares me to consider what might happen if it comes back. Thanks to my friends who come from different religions and backgrounds coming together to pray for our safety and one of my Wiccan friends sent me a bag of protection herbs. I have bibles in the house tucked away safely for needs, and I keep salt by my window sills – a thing my mom told me to do – and dream catchers both bedrooms.

You can believe, call me crazy, say I’m bringing it on myself for whatever reason you so desire. But the reality of it is, these things are real, ghosts, angels, demons, the supernatural does exist. And as my grandmother once said:

“Once you are aware of it, it will always be aware of you.”

In truth, you cannot fight these things alone. If you do, believe me, I only caution you to remember that the paranormal can be dangerous, it can be wonderful or horrible. But, you don’t have to believe me. I just thought I should warn you.

Originally submitted by Mikunitsune94 on Reddit

If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, please reach out. You can find help at a National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

USA: 18002738255 US Crisis textline: 741741 text HOME

United Kingdom: 116 123

Trans Lifeline (877-565-8860)

Others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines

https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org

© 2024, G. Michael Vasey & My Haunted Life Too.com (Unless indicated otherwise by author’s own copyright above). All rights reserved.

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